I need help with my computer

[basara318]

Hi
I run a BH6 with celery 36 oc 550. a maxtor 5 gig and 96 megs of RAM, powered by a voodoo3 2000. yeah i know it sucks, well recently i bought "the sims" and for some odd reason, the game would always crash to the desktop or freeze, reducing the clockspeed back to 366 doesnt help either, after looking at the support page i found i have to reduce the hardware acceleration properties to basic before it would run, which i did and the game did run fine. but the framrate is so slloooooooooooww, like 5fps, question is, i want to upgrade my computer now but i dont know which part i should upgrade, i have about 200$ budget, i think maybe i should buy a new harddrive?(the maxtor is like 2 yrs old already) or a new CPU? or do i need more RAM? please help with your suggestions
thanks

 

[Ulysses]

Your budget is perfect for a new Pentium III Coppermine 600E CPU. It should work in your board, whether you have the BH6 or the later revision of that board (the later rev. will take faster than 600 mhz). You may have to upgrade your BIOS so it will recognize the new chip, however.

You can get the 600E in either the SECC2 form (aka Slot1 or black cartride) or the FC-PGA form (bare chip). The latter will require an adapter called an Abit 'Slotket' to fit the board. I'd recommend the FC-PGA form for future compatibility.

See:
http://www.abit-usa.com/english/product/bh6.htm

P.S.
You might have thought of going with another Cele, but I'd say move up to the Coppermine. A 600E even if not overclocked will perform as well or better than any overclocked Cele, even the new ones.

 

[basara318]

Hi
yeah i would Like to buy a p3 600, but one issue here is that i have pc100 RAMs, so not much OCing, and also do you think getting a new CPU would be more advantageous over a new geforce or HDD??
thanks

 

[kat5iv]

how fast is your PC100 ram? if it is 8ns stuff, ittl probably do 133 at CAS3, rembember most PC-133 ram is 7.5ns

- Jason

 

[Ulysses]

First things first, I always say. Unless your HDD is too small or extremely slow I would still start with the CPU. In fact I'd start with the CPU anyway. And your vid card is not that old is it, so it can't be that bad. I really think you should start with the CPU first - later do the others. Especially since you have a decent board. Most people have a whole system that's old and that's expensive to fix. You can go in steps.

Most PC100 RAM will do 110-115 mhz just due to manufacturing margins. So a 600E/100 bumped to 672/112 should be a world away from what you have now.

I'm not knowledgeable enough about video cards, but I think you can sometimes be better off to not get the newest most expensive card, but get a lesser one. For most games that should be good enough. But the reviews of the hottest stuff are very seductive.

 

[Gunbuster]

You need to fix the hardware acceleration problem. A blazing fast cpu wont help if you still have to turn acceleration off.

Check the video card you found the problem, hardware acceleration is not working right

Update drivers, check for video card overheat.

 

[basara318]

SO something is screwed up with my voodoo3 then?
it didnt happen before. sigh.